Wednesday 1 May 2013
at the Faculty of Laws, UCL

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
Throughout history, religious belief and religious affiliation have been powerful factors in shaping human societies. They have defined individual identities and communities, governed the relationship between commonwealths, and inspired human creativity. Religious visions, hopes and fears also stimulated conflict and unleashed violence. For an overwhelming and growing majority of people living on our planet today, religious belief answers questions central to their existence. It allows them to cope with difficult or decisive moments and structures everyday life. It seems that over the past generations, differences regarding the place and role of religious belief have grown considerably. In a world marked more than ever before by migration and global connectivity, societies which tend towards religious neutrality or indifference need to define anew their relationship to communities with strong religious commitments. In the past as well as today, the relationship between individual and community, between different confessions and religious communities, between these communities and the state, are negotiated in complex processes of moderation, sometimes involving conflict or even violence.

This conference is the closing event of a four-workshop series which took place at UCL in 2010-12. It offers a cross-disciplinary assessment of these different forms in which religious identity, commitment and community are negotiated in the contemporary world. Without claiming to exhaust the topic, it proposes to look at the agents, procedures and outcomes of these negotiations, and hopefully will evaluate the potentials and limits of negotiation of religion.

More information here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/events/religion